1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a resonant electrical generation system, including a resonating system or structure to generate electricity, and a pulsatile combustion device to drive the resonating structure.
2. The Background Art
A revolutionary change in machine architecture is occurring wherein classical machines that produce energetic work, but do not compute, and classical systems that only compute, are merging to form systems that perform computed work in a progressively more automated fashion. Vehicles, military systems, robots, interfaces to synthetic environments, consumer products, and other information driven machines that move, are examples of systems where increasing numbers of actuators and sensors are being operated in closed-loop, using digital controllers so as to increase performance and flexibility. Maintaining the rate at which these new types of machines advance requires the balanced development of actuators, sensors, and computers, as well as the materials, structures, and processes used for their manufacture.
One difficult problem, which has received little attention, is that of actuation, specifically, using compact integrated high power density actuators having large displacement and force capabilities. The difficulties lie in the fact that the design of an integrated actuation system is a complex problem that requires the simultaneous satisfaction of multiple conflicting constraints. In fact, once actuators are considered as subsystems, it becomes clear that improvements or radically new approaches are required to three basic elements that form an integrated actuation subsystem, namely: 1) energy supplies; 2) energy modulation systems; and 3) output devices.
For example, in the case of smart material actuators, such as piezo-electric or magnetostrictive actuators, the requirements for efficient, compact energy supplies, power modulation electronics and motion amplification mechanisms makes the achievable system level power density (force-displacement-bandwidth density) significantly smaller than one would believe by simply looking at the intrinsic power density of the smart material alone.